Volunteer Privacy Policy and Notice

This privacy policy sets out how Age Connects Torfaen (ACT) uses and protects any information that you give the organisation when you volunteer your time or services. Age Connects Torfaen (ACT) collects and processes personal data relating to its volunteers to effectively manage its volunteer relationship. ACT is committed to being transparent about how it collects and uses that data and to ensuring that your privacy is protected.

What information does ACT collect?

ACT collects and processes a range of information about you. This includes:

your name, address and contact details, including email address and telephone number, your age group and gender;

the conditions of your volunteering, including the signed volunteering agreement and the start and end date of your volunteering;

details of your qualifications, skills, experience and employment (or volunteering) history, including start and end dates, with previous and current employers or organisations;

details of your bank account;

information about your emergency contacts;

information about your criminal record;

details of your availability (days of work and working hours) and attendance;

details of your volunteering activity such as what you did and for how long in hours;

assessments of your performance, including one to one meetings and performance reviews and related correspondence;

your reason for volunteering; how you found out about ACT and what you want to gain from your volunteering;

whether you have any connections or relationships with services users, staff and other volunteers;

details of any complaints or grievances raised by you;

information about medical or health conditions, and/or issues including whether or not you have a disability for which ACT needs to make reasonable adjustments;

when you visit our premises which have CCTV systems operating for the security of service users, visitors and staff, these systems may record your image during your visit.

ACT may collect this information in a variety of ways. For example, data might be collected through volunteer application forms, CVs or resumes; obtained from your passport or other identity documents such as your driving licence; from forms completed by you at the start of or during volunteering; from correspondence with you, or through interviews, meetings, or other assessments.

In some cases, ACT may collect personal data about you from third parties, such as references supplied by former employers (or organisations in the case of voluntary work), information from employment background check providers, and information from criminal records checks permitted by law.

Data will be stored in a range of different places, including in your personnel file, in ACT's HR management systems and in other IT systems (including ACT's email system).

Why does ACT process personal data?

The law on data protection sets out a number of different reasons for which an organisation may collect and process your personal data, including:

Consent:

In specific situations, ACT can collect and process your data with your consent; for example, when you tick a box to receive email newsletters, or when you sign a photo consent form.

When collecting your personal data, we’ll always make clear to you when you can consent to this information being collected and processed, as well as how you withdraw this consent.

Contractual:

ACT needs to process data to enter into a volunteering contract with you and to meet its obligations under your volunteering agreement (or contract). For example, it needs to process your data to provide you with a volunteering agreement, to pay your expenses in accordance with your volunteering agreement and our volunteering policy.

ACT may also need to process your data to meet its contractual obligations within funding arrangements that supports this arm of our work.

Legal compliance:

In some cases, ACT may need to process data to ensure that it is complying with its legal obligations. For example, to comply with health and safety laws.

Legitimate interest:

In specific situations, we require your data to pursue our legitimate interests in a way which might reasonably be expected as part of running our organisation and which does not materially impact your rights, freedom or interests. ACT has a legitimate interest in processing personal data before, during and after the end of the volunteering relationship.

Processing volunteer data allows ACT to:

run recruitment and promotion processes;

maintain accurate and up-to-date volunteer records and contact details (including details of who to contact in the event of an emergency);

operate and keep a record of complaints to ensure acceptable conduct within the organisation;

operate and keep a record of volunteering performance, activity and related processes, to effectively manage our volunteers; to provide certificates of recognition and to report this information (anonymously) to funders, within our annual report and other interested parties;

ensure effective health and safety practice, general HR and business administration;

ensure effective safeguarding of our service users, employees and volunteers;

provide references on request for current or former volunteers;

respond to and defend against legal claims; and

maintain and promote equality in the organisation.

Some special categories of personal data, such as information about health or medical conditions, is processed to ensure that we can fully support volunteers and make reasonable adjustments when required.

Where ACT processes other special categories of personal data, such as information about ethnic origin, sexual orientation, health or religion or belief, this is done for the purposes of equal opportunities monitoring.

Who has access to data?

Your information may be shared internally, including HR, members of the Board of Trustees, the finance team, your line manager, senior managers and other members of staff if this is necessary in the performance of their role.

ACT shares your data with third parties in order to obtain pre-volunteering references from other employers or organisations, obtain employment background checks from third-party providers and obtain necessary criminal records checks from the Disclosure and Barring Service. ACT may also share your data with third parties that provide IT support on behalf of the organisation if this is necessary in the performance of your volunteering role.

ACT may also share your data with third parties that process data on its behalf, in connection with HR and payroll.

If we transfer your personal information to another country, we'll take appropriate measures to protect your privacy and the personal information we transfer.

How does ACT protect data?

ACT takes the security of your data seriously. ACT has internal policies and controls in place to try to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not accessed except by its employees in the performance of their duties.

Where ACT engages third parties to process personal data on its behalf, they do so on the basis of written instructions, are under a duty of confidentiality and are obliged to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the security of data.

For how long does ACT keep data?

ACT will hold your personal data for the duration of your volunteering activity and for six years after your volunteering has ended to be able to respond effectively to claims and reference requests.

Where the law requires up to, we will hold your data for longer; for example, assessments under health and safety regulations.

Your rights

As a data subject, you have a number of rights. You can:

access and obtain a copy of your data on request;

require ACT to change incorrect or incomplete data;

require ACT to delete or stop processing your data, for example where the data is no longer necessary for the purposes of processing; and

object to the processing of your data where ACT is relying on its legitimate interests as the legal ground for processing.

Checking your identity

To protect the confidentiality of your information, we will ask you to verify your identity before proceeding with any request you make under this Privacy Notice. If you have authorised a third party to submit a request on your behalf, we will ask them to prove they have your permission to act.

Contacting the Regulator

If you feel that your data has not been handled correctly, or you are unhappy with our response to any requests you have made to us regarding the use of your personal data, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office.

You can contact them by calling 0303 123 1113.

Or go online to www.ico.org.uk/concerns (opens in a new window; please note we can't be responsible for the content of external websites)

Automated decision-making

Volunteer decisions are not based solely on automated decision-making.

Amendments

This privacy policy may be amended from time to time consistent with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation. We will communicate any changes to you.